This species, Anestia semiochrea has been mentioned previously, but new material has come to hand. Three garden Yellow Gums, Eucalyptus leucoxylon, have been popular with the larvae of this moth. Perhaps there are species of lichen or algae on the bark of these particular trees that the larvae find very palatable, at the moment there are many on the tree trunks, and they are beginning to fashion their fragile cocoons to begin pupation. These images show the process, beginning with a larva, plus another inside its newly built cocoon beginning the transformation into a chrysalis.

It’s final skin has now been discarded as is the practice.

Another individual, more advanced.

And another, process complete.

The females of this species are wingless, and after emerging lay their eggs on their cocoons. As luck would have it, while checking the trunk of one tree, a newly emerged female that had got an early start was beginning to lay her eggs, and a watch was kept on her during the next 24 hours. At the end of that time she had finished, and a count on the computer monitor of the visible eggs revealed that she had laid in the region of three hundred. Quite an astounding number from a small creature measuring only about 8 mm nose to tail. Her empty pupa case can be seen inside the cocoon.

Egg laying complete.